Yahoo Joins Google Effort to Encrypt Email

Yahoo said Thursday it will join an effort by rival Google to create an encrypted email system by next year that could make it mathematically impossible to hand over users’ messages to a court.

If they’re successful, it would mark a big step in bringing encrypted messaging — long the province of privacy hawks and conspiracy theorists — to a consumer-friendly service. It also marks one of the starkest examples of tech giants rethinking their business plans after Edward Snowden began leaking secrets from the National Security Agency last year. Until February, Yahoo didn’t even have a c-level executive dedicated to information security.

Google in June announced plans for its own project for spy-proof email. But the addition of Yahoo is notable because the two have access to such a large chunk of world email users. In December 2013, Google had 366 million unique Gmail visitors followed by Yahoo at 273 million, according to ComScore.

Both companies say the encryption tool will be an optional feature that users will have to turn on.